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Sunday, October 31, 2010

Well it's time once again for that brief season of regional shows. First up and somewhat earlier than in the last few years, is Fiasco; the show put on by the Leeds Wargames Society.

I'm happy to report that I enjoyed the show much more than in the last few years, not least due to it's new and much improved home in the Royal Armouries Conference hall, as opposed to the previous exhibition hall within the main museum building.

This space is easily twice the size of the old hall and has far better lighting on top of a less claustrophobic air. It's as easy to find and still allows access to the Royal Armouries. Parking remains impossible of course!

All this seemed to attract a handful of extra traders, though it was impossible to tell if it also increased the number of visitors, still I heard positive noises from the traders to the general affect that business was up!

I encountered lots of friends over the course of my wanderings, so hello to all, this made for a pleasant diversion from meandering around the show.

And so on to the display games. At the entrance was a large display from Legendary Wargames, including their take on Albuera:

25/28mm in the Gilder style and using in the Grand Manner Rules.

Several other static displays were set up to entice the gamer looking to fulfill his fantasies of epic games:

Moving on we had a large 15mm WW2 game set in the Western Desert, but for reasons best known to themselves using the Piquet rules, each to his own I suppose...

I think the models were mostly Peter Pig, to my mind some of the best in the scale.

Another WW2 game, this time in 28mm. Recreating an engagement from the Italian Invasion of Greece.Well finished scenery, including some excellent trenches. Though I found the gradient of the slopes distinctly, wargamery.

Pretty looking Greek figures, to face the Italians in the trenches atop the hill.

My main gripe with this game was that the supporting and explanatory information was so extensive it actually did a good job of hiding the game! A shame.

Moving on, for technical excellence it would be hard to beat this Zombie game, made of interlocking rooms and wired for light effects:

I can't speak for the provenance of the models, though I found something distinctly pre-painted about them. I liked the idea of the clear bases however, Ideal for this sort of game. Here the security forces ready for action:

Whilst below, a zombie seems attracted to a pulsating power source.

From modern technical gaming, to the traditional. The Lance and Longbow Society roll out their Renaissance forces (Fornovo 1495, I'm informed) once again. Colourful, but not in any way sensational; but a perfectly acceptable club game.

Finally my favourite of the show, out of my biased selection (I've not included several games, including the less photogenic and those I'd seen before). A modest but very effective 15mm Napoleonics game, played using Lasalle. I'm not sure if it was any particular engagement, though of course it looked reminiscent of part of Waterloo to me.

The scenery just looked right, without being spectacular, the figures numerous and pleasing without being of an unattainable standard. All in all what any gamer can and should aspire to!

So what have we learned; a few things; an effective game for a show need not be the most visually impressive, but should have some form of wow factor. It should have supporting information but not be dwarfed by its material. The rules, if the game is to be played should be well known by the umpires, and simple enough to allow the casual player to need to remember nothing, and be in and out in half an hour or so. It's acceptable for a game to just sit there, but if so it must be markedly prettier.

And why does any of this matter? Well, my next project is a display game for Pudsey Recon in a scant six weeks time. So myself and my co-conspirator Neil needed to brush up on what we wanted to do for our own efforts.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Some gamers love em, personally I see them as a sometimes necessary evil; and for myself would much rather use multiple stands of models. However for Warhammer and it's derivatives they are pretty much standard. To the point that even if putting out a unit of five models without one, an opponent will often ask if you want (a typically far too large) movement tray for them, as if the 3 seconds more it may take to move the unit will somehow impinge on his gaming experience!

The next issue that amazes me is the price of the things. Well to be fair, the bog-standard ones above aren't that bad; £5 for 8 is OK I suppose, but the customisable trays are another matter, and I've hardly ever seen them assembled well; generally only with the proficiency of a hamfisted Chimp, tasked with carrying out the job in a hurry, at night, with an aggravated Mrs Chimp distracting him.

Why do that when you could spend £2 on a sheet of 60thou (2mm) Plasticard, and knock them up yourself? Obviously this allows you to make any shape you need, and work out much cheaper, compared to the £6.50 customisable set. The below were just over half a sheet of Plasticard, took 20 minutes to make, and will accommodate four units of 20 Warhammer models.

Anyway, that brings me on to my other gripes about movement trays. For many gamers the above would be considered finished, urghh!

Especially annoying when looking at a painted army, why spoil the effect by sticking them on unpainted movement trays. Sometimes they go to the trouble of at least painting the walls, but then leave the floor untouched or sprayed black - why are your men standing over some abyssal pit? Please! have the decency to paint them in the same manner as the bases of your army at least!

Then there's the insistence on using the things even when hopelessly impractical. Your unit moving up a hill but isn't fully on it? No problem, prop up the movement tray with dice, so rather than taking them off it and having them appear to be partly on the hill and partly at the base, the whole unit can float in the air some distance from it. Never mind the liability of the whole affair collapsing. Crossing a bridge? just continue to use the tray, even though it's much wider than the model it sits on, that looks fine. Only two models left in the unit? Still use a twenty man tray, because logically it must make it twice as fast to move the unit, and of course is in no way inconvenient or unsightly.

So I guess you can see I'm not a fan of them, alas they are here to stay, and sometimes I'm obliged to use them.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

From the Valiant US Infantry set, which to be perfectly honest, I don't like. I wouldn't buy another box, they are too large to match anything other than larger metal 20mm ranges. Still they are for sale so I should say their very nicely painted; you could become their proud owner - here: eBay Link

Secondly, a snap from a nicely painted (if in places slightly battered) Eldar army, belonging to Martin at the club. Almost makes me wish I'd not sold my Eldar. Almost, but not quite.

Lastly, I'm on leave this week; I hesitate to call it a holiday, as I can't actually afford to go anywhere much! Still it afforded me the time to mooch around charity shop book and record collections; amongst which I found a copy of the following:

Only £4 made it a must have, good text from what I've read so far. But the illustrations are something else; the illustrator looks more at home with fashion than military topics - a group of more effeminate soldiers you are unlikely to find - and his style is also heavily influenced by The Yellow Submarine so far as I can tell.

Good enough for the earlier topics, but thoroughly unsuited to the WW2 and later topics, it includes an object lesson in how to make the Wehrmacht look like a jolly bunch, and that just should not be for so many reasons!

Monday, October 25, 2010

Or "lets keep those cheese eating surrender Monkeys on the run, shall we?" As a preamble to the Big Barrosa game, myself and my main Napoleonics co-conspirator, Neil, had a practice game of the Black Powder rules.

The Scenario was lifted from the Sikh War and transposed to last days of the War with France. A French Division is aiming to cross the battlefield without being delayed by a smaller Allied force.

This related to the Skirmishing before Aliwal, where Sikh artillery and Cavalry seriously harassed the advancing British; here the roles were somewhat reversed!

Neil, understanding he had 2 hours - 8 turns - to get half his force from one side of the battlefield and off the other, sent one brigade ahead in columns of march; whilst the rest of the division deployed to cover them.

The Allied deployment was between two farms and on a ridge line, the intention was to use the superior British troops to block the escaping French, whilst the weaker militia would harass the French rear.

The Spanish cavalry quickly managed to get around the rear of a bumbling French cavalry Brigade, catching the French horse artillery and scattering it...

But equally quickly were destroyed when the French cavalry reorganised themselves. On the back of this success the French threw a Battalion against the Spanish on the hill, but the combination of steady musketry and well aimed artillery smashed their attack. Not for the first time Neil realised you don't march a single unit in the face of artillery.

And so a French Battalion was destroyed, but the main brigade was making progress to wards the opposite side of the battlefield. The British advanced one unit past a farm to intercept the French, but were instead assaulted by French cavalry. Only the swift, and assured formation of a square saved them.

In fact it cost the French one regiment of cavalry, raked with fire from the British, and Spanish artillery. Another French infantry battalion was swept away in short order too, and to all intents and purposes the screening force was destroyed.

However the main brigade managed to escape the British clutches. Neil needed to get one more unit off the table in time to claim any sort of victory, but time was against him, and on the eighth turn he found the remnants of his broken division being pursued by the British line .

A good little practice. Some points of note on the unit sizes. We used foot battalions of 16 figures - on 40mm square bases of four, cavalry regiments of 6 models and artillery batteries of two guns. Combined with half measurements this produced a reasonable game on a 6x4 foot table; and will be the unit size I use in the future (except maybe using 8 cavalry for a regiment instead...).

The sad news of the night was discovering that Neil may be moving south for a new job, meaning I will need to encourage new opponents for BP; to that end I guess I will need to work on my French army more actively now, rather than as a sideline to my British.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Andy, a recent new arrival at the club, is primarily into historical gaming (always good news) and has been turned on to Battlefield Evolution by regular players. I arranged a game against him the other week... He has some very nicely painted US Para's, done with Armypainter I think, though I can't be sure. His basing is comprehensive and very attractive. He'd also set up a pleasing table of extensive but plausible terrain for our game. Only the Para's were being air-dropped into this battlefield, which looked like humans had created it rather than some randomised element of chaos (like 9 out of 10 Warhammer 40k boards, say).

Lacking points and armour, Andy borrowed a couple of my tanks to bump up his army. I'd gone for a blatant firepower element in my army and so fielded a Panther tank, as well as a Hetzer tank destroyer and a Pak 40 anti tank gun.

As ever with BE the literal losses were heavy on both sides, if you interpret any casualty as potentially a wound or retreat of models as well as KIA's it seems less severe.

Nevertheless my Germans, regular Grenadiers rather than the hideous SS, Advanced most effectively under fire, giving more than they got in almost every turn.

Immediately the Panther destroyed the US M10 tank destroyer, and the German armour then went about the business of stalking the American's Sherman. However my Hetzer was fully equipped with a rack of Polish made ammunition (three 1's to hit in a row) and so never did more than contain the enemy. The Pak 40 was reduced to a role of direct fire anti-infantry work.

In fact at the very end, the Hetzer was destroyed, but whilst so preoccupied in that task the Sherman was itself stalked and assaulted by the Grenadiers. At the last gasp the Teller mines did their work and destroyed the American tank.

My orders were to overrun the enemy and make it into Andy's defense perimeter; this we did quite effectively. Andy for his part was somewhat outgunned, but this was his first experience using armour in the game.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

A handful of recent paint jobs make an appearance today. First off General Paget, British cavalry general of the early Peninsular Wars and a hero of Waterloo:

In 1815, [Paget] was appointed cavalry commander in Belgium, under the still resentful eye of Wellington. On the eve of Waterloo, Paget had his command extended by Wellington so as to include the whole of the allied cavalry and horse artillery. He handily covered the retirement of the Anglo-Allies from Quatre Bras to Waterloo on 17 June, and on 18 June led the spectacular cavalry charge of the British centre, which checked and in part routed D'Erlon's corps d'armée (see Waterloo campaign).

One of the last cannon shots fired that day hit Paget in the right leg, necessitating its amputation. According to anecdote, he was close to Wellington when his leg was hit, and exclaimed, "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!" — to which Wellington replied, "By God, sir, so you have!" [Also] according to his aide-de-camp, Thomas Wildman, during the amputation Paget smiled and said, "I have had a pretty long run. I have been a beau these 47 years and it would not be fair to cut the young men out any longer."

From Wikipedia

The model itself is not an attempt to match his best known uniform (that of Waterloo) but does broadly match alternate portraits of him, and will serve to portray generic cavalry commanders. I was particularly pleased with the leopard skin, though I don't think this quick snap really does it justice. Next up for my British is Olde Beaky himself; Wellington.

Elsewhere I reworked and expanded a Dogs of War regiment. I did have a unit of 10 halberdiers, and had bought 10 more models (on the cheap) to expand them. But the unit performed so poorly in the game that I decided to convert the lot to another regiment of pike.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Ok, so I felt it best to get the photo's of the big game out there as quickly as possible. I can say I was pretty much completely happy as to how it went.

(More items will follow as I get them sorted.)

So Within an hour and a half we'd got the terrain and all the troops in position. Well over a thousand models, which for the club is probably a record. A twelve by six foot battlefield was prepared as a reasonable representation of the Barrosa battlefield; with Barrosa hill to the the top of the photo, The open woodland and Torre Bermejas in the centre and the creeks leading to Cadiz in the lower left.

The initial deployment: Two large French brigades and a cavalry brigade attacked from Barrosa Hill, whilst another French brigade looked to block the Spanish around Torre Bermejas.

The British were mainly in mid-deployment in the woodland, except for Brown's division which had been deserted by the Spanish under Pena, now outside Torre Bermejas.

And so the initial dispositions were broadly those of the actual battle at about 12:30 when Brown reported his predicament to Graham. Graham made no bones of the matter and told Brown to Get back up the hill and wrest it from the French.

Each side had four commanders for the day, and after some time to discuss their tactics they set to work. The French diversionary commander, Vilatte, immediately went off script and decided attack was the best way to contain the Spanish. The British meanwhile hoped that a tactical withdrawal would give them time to prepare for the French assault.

The French meanwhile moved part of their force into the woodland to engage the British. The British were forming an orderly defense along the outskirts of the woods, but were to find themselves under heavy fire.

A cavalry battle was developing on the beach, with the French initially seeing off the Kings German Legion, but then finding the Spanish Hussars surprisingly resistant. In the woods the French were able to pick off one Battalion of British infantry, but progression off the hill was slower.

Against the Spanish around Torre Bermejas, Vilatte was coming off worse, after initial success.

The French tore away at the British ranks with shot, shell and bayonet turning the British flank and managing to kill General Graham in a brisk firefight. The British rallied and formed a defensive line across the road through the wood, whilst Spanish troops, satisfied the French in their area were dispatched, came to the British aid.

As the game came to an end the French were pushing the British out of their defensive line, but The Spanish were rallying after a slow start and the French under Vilatte were effectively wiped out. Still as the French priority was the Destruction of the British to avoid an effective relief of Cadiz, it was considered that they had achieved their objectives more completely.

The British had lost 4 units of foot and one of horse, as well as getting General Graham shot out of his horse; the Spanish one foot and one horse. By contrast the French had lost 6 units of foot, though this included the entire Vilatte Brigade. On reflection losses were pretty even, but the French certainly held the key ground at the end of the day.

The Spanish put in an unexpectedly good performance, whilst the British, to paraphrase the French commander of Albuera (a later battle) were beaten everywhere, broken through at every turn, but did not know how to run.

The result was completely different from the actual battle, and what is the point of these refights, if you don't get the chance, at least, to rewrite history. Where the British defeated the French in detail on the day, the French dealt with them on this occasion.

My thanks to the players, Neil, Laurie, Mark and Stuart for the Emperor; Martin, Mike, Gav and Ross for the Allies.

An early book, now something of a classic, by the (still very much alive apparently!) Donald Featherstone; one of our hobbies true forefathers and leaders.

'Shilling' tells the tale of the 16th Lancers and the battle of Aliwal in the first Sikh War. In particular, Donald focuses on the recruitment, training and living conditions of the troopers in an unromantic style.

Oddly, what was I reminded of when reading this? Warhammer 40k. The grim past of which Mr Featherstone speaks precedes and carries a similar tone to the endless savage backstory within Games Workshop's dark universe.

Safe to say death and misery are never far away from the troopers of the 16th, even if they are far from battle. In fact battle is their time to shine, and is represented as far preferable and as the epitomy of Victorian endeavour.

Donald's knowledge of the subject is extensive, this book was originally published in the 1960's, but at this time I think his writing was still under development. The extensive notes (well over a third of the book) are excellent, but at times his efforts at carrying a semi fictionalised narrative, and some limited dialogue are laboured and repetitive. Some of it today is some distance from the politically correct. Still it speeds along, and as a rainy Sunday read will bring out the small boy in any wargamer over the age of forty.

It is regularly republished and last appeared in 2007; you should have no difficulty finding a copy, and it will be worth while.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Having got hold of the Kings of War rules a few weeks ago (see earlier post) myself and Ross got together to give them a try.

My undead and Dwarves neatly fitted into the three current army lists, and I found that my 3000 point Warhammer armies translated to 1000 point KoW armies. One thing to note straight away is that army creation as it stands is fast and straightforward. The initial rules make no restrictions on force composition and the units are largely standard with a few basic upgrades being available only.

In the end both armies numbered a hundred or so models, for what is a half recommended size game.

Our deployments in our first game were very Warhammer influenced. Which worked fine. Both sides sought to get stuck in swiftly. The combat system pretty much ensures that a large unit cannot be destroyed immediately unless it is flanked or attacked in the rear. Unusually for fantasy rules the opponent does not fight during combat, indeed the defending player in any turn has pretty much nothing to do but watch. However the game is very fast and so this is not to onerous, in fact this convention helps speed up matters even further.

Anyway, an attacker, rolling ten dice will be lucky to cause two or three casualties, and these will be hard pressed to cause a unit any concern. Morale is essentially variable from turn to turn a unit could be wavering one turn, rally the next and rout on the third.
Movement is very simply handled and works, but could seem too simple for rules lawyers, concerned about exploitation of the rules (and that is true of pretty much the whole set as it stands).
Magic, presently at least, is staggeringly sparse. Three spells. Spells can have different ratings however depending on the character wielding them. Essentially you have a magic missile, a heal spell and a dragon breath spell. Shooting is handled essentially like melee, but at range. We found shooting units overpowered, not intrinsically because they are powerful at range, but more because as the army lists stand they are as good in combat as regular troops, for the same basic cost. I understand this is already being changed in the army lists by Mantic.
Characters move around and act independently, there is no critical need, as in Warhammer, to have them attached to units.
So overall, the game produces the very pure, tactical experience, one which you don't expect in a Fantasy game, where heroics, oddball units, magic items and special rules usually dominate. On both occasions the Dwarves won by dint of out manoeuvring the undead to turn their flanks and out number them in combat. Mantic seem to have recognised that with their comparatively cheap figures, they can encourage players to field big armies (of which I applaud), and the rules work with those in mind, I think our test games at a 1000 points let us learn the rules but were simply too small.
To conclude, I think we'll be playing KoW a bit more, it certainly has potential. I hope they don't spoil it by over complicating things in the future...

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Having ad a chance to look at these in the flesh I thought I would make quick mention of them.

Plastic Soldier are a new British company that has advertised heavily despite not having a product of it's own to actually sell for several months. But now they finally have got their first set out in two scales 1:72nd 20mm and 1:56th 28mm.

Now in terms of value for money, they are a most respectable 57 figures for £18.50 in 28mm or £10.00 in 20mm, there is almost no assembly which is a mixed blessing, and does mean some rather flat poses, but these will take very little time to prepare compared say to Valiant 20mm or Bolt Action 28mm plastics.

I'm not a huge fan of the support equipment being a separate set, but it is a valid practical concern, and personally i have a stack of spare 20mm Russian machine guns and mortars.

So maybe soon you'll see a few of these filter through my blog, rather than the ubiquitous Germans. Russians are almost as good an eBay seller anyway.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

General Rules:Poor Command Structure: Units within a Brigade must stay within 4" of one another to use a Brigade order. If a commander wishes to issue orders to separate units he must deduct one from his command rating for each successive order he attempts to issue (reflecting less provision of staff to convey or execute the orders). The range of command radius is also halved and so a commander deducts one from his rating for every 6" between him and the unit he wishes to order. All other command rules apply as normal.

Indirect: Unit may fire up to stated distance without needing a clear line of sight, though Forest and hills are considered substantial enough that units can only be targeted if part of the firers Brigade can see the target already. However as indirect fire is unaimed and so suffers an automatic -1 to hit, and all other modifiers still apply.

Penetration: Units with 3+ Morale are reduced to a 4+ morale from this fire

Slow fire: May not fire the same turn as they have moved

Fulminate: The weapon is prone to be a danger to it's own user. Any rolls of '1' to hit result in a morale test for their own unit.

Brutal: any unit hit by this weapon reduces its Morale by 1 e.g. from 4+ to 5+

Formations

Massed Bodies, equivalent to columns of attack are the standard formation. Special rules like Pikestand can only apply to units in this formation. Shooting units lose 1 dice of fire in this formation.

Lines are formations of two ranks deep. shooting units may fire at full strength in this formation.

Marches are formations no more than three figures wide, they may not fire but gain the special rules for columns of march.

Warbands are particularly common in this period, as are skirmishers

Unit Rules:Pike Stand: Cavalry may not charge an unbroken Pike unit, except to its rear arc. They reroll misses in combat if they are fighting to their front and were charged or are charging this turn.

Other special rules can be applied from the main rulebook as deemed appropriate by the players. For example English longbowmen could be considered Tough Fighters and Steady...

Well I hope that's enough for you get an idea of the potential, if anyone tries it out I'd like to hear their thoughts, is anything too powerful, anything need tweaking, any other additions in terms of special rules?

Monday, October 11, 2010

Well you know I rave about Black Powder, I'm truly a convert, but given the rules genesis in a fantasy battle system essentially presenting medieval warfare I did wonder how far back it was possible to push the rules.

At the recent ACW game, a visit from Pat of the Harrogate club suggested to me the potential to try the rules in a much earlier time frame.

And so I mused some rules for the High Medieval period, and myself and Ross gave them a try.

More on the stats and so on later, but as for the game it seemed to work rather well. I introduced some tweaks to the command system to make the generals less able and brigades form closer. The armies were my French and Flemish troop - far more even handed opponents than the medieval machine gun that is the English longbow army!

A mass of French spears and crossbows advanced on the Flemish pike, whilst their Knights made slow work of the Flemish mounted Sergeants who were supported by a lone cannon.

In the push of pike it was mixed fortunes with the largest Flemish unit breaking swiftly, but the others proving more than a match for the French. In the end reserves and flank attacks proved telling.

At the end of the battle, the French had three of their four brigades broken whilst the Flemings only had one formation broken. Though it had been close at many points.

It served to show that with sensible amendment the rules could cover this period too! A marvellous result.

Now I hear you asking, how did I go about this? Fair enough I should tell you.